Enigma Tape Magazine

[TMD2003]

Here's an interesting development on t'other forum...

Enigma Tape Magazine issues 1-4 are completely MIA, issue 8 is .TAP only, and issues 8-9 are likely to be the versions found on Sinclair User rather than "in the wild", in case there's any difference. On briefly testing the archived copy of issue 5 I find it's got SAM Coupé data on it with even the pilot tone being very high-pitched (hence I'd assume it was saved with DEVICE t35, for those of you who speak SAM-ese). Hence, this is going to be a very tricky job to archive the tapes.

Helpfully, tape 5 contains a message "ripped by Dr. Titus", so we know who managed to get it working and TZXed properly.

As you can see, I've asked Louise to drop me an email so I can at least provide some kind of link between World Of Chit-Chat And Not A Lot Of Spectrum these days, and the experts who live here. I think Dr. Titus is mostly found on Russian forums these days, though communication shouldn't be too difficult. It could be that Enigma issue 1 is just completely standard data, but given that we're clearly dealing with "nerds from back in the day" (Hamish Rust is involved, and that's a name I recognise as a regular on 1990s covertapes), I suspect it won't be, and there will be lots of custom loaders to trip over, as well as data from the Spectrum's older illegitimate son.

[Einar Saukas]

Interesting!

Does it mean Enigma #5 is actually a program for SAM? It seems to crash when loaded in a Spectrum 48K...

[TMD2003]

There should be a mixture of Spectrum and SAM Coupé content in there, judging by the opening message after the first header has loaded.

[^m00h^]

Asked Titus to convert waves to tzx long time ago. As i can remember, one block in ETM5 was overwritten by the game and Titus took it from another issue. Probably mates from World of Sam might have Enigma tape magazine for Sam Coupe on their disks, but it seems just almost unbelievable.
E.G., Fred 22/29 Sam magazine have Enigma music demo included. Do we have anyone related with Sam Coupe and World of Sam ?

https://www.worldofsam.org/products/fred-22
https://www.worldofsam.org/products/fred-29

[LouEnPointe]

Hi all,
I'm Louise from the other forum. I've been liaising with TMD2003 (please tell me I typed that right) to sort out the Enigma issues I have into wav files. I've just managed to do the first one and I've scanned a fair amount of Letters/documents from PD things I had of which TMD has the google drive link.

I'm continuing to encode more and I'm verifying on FUSE wav loading as I pass on. There are things I don't know and I appreciate the help.
Thanks,
Louise

[LouEnPointe]

Oh I forgot to add that all the Enigma issues are fastloaders as far as I recall (Issue 1 definitely is, and I see no reason that they would change).
Only the instruction sheet for issue 5 and up mention SAM Coupe explicitly and it's also the first issue that no longer mentions the 48K Spectrum.
Thanks,
Lou
PS Any demos on the tapes may or may not be fastloaders.

[TMD2003]

Hi all,
I'm Louise from the other forum. I've been liaising with TMD2003 (please tell me I typed that right)

Stick an @ symbol in front of it and it'll alert me. Anyway, hi. I can confirm that there are not only turbo loaders on the tapes, but the one I'm analysing and trying to get to work at the moment (Enigma #1) has higher-speed pilot tones as well.

Glass is the only game I know of that uses any kind of turbo loader with higher-speed pilot tones; it displayed "Searching:" and "Loading:" prompts, and Enigma #1 does as well, so it may be that it's a better-known routine than I'd thought. Glass TZXed well, so The Enigma Project should be possible for those who know what they're doing with TZX converters. This, annoyingly, is not me - I always run into problems when turbo loaders come up, especially something that's non-standard. It does sound, to my ears, like a very basic 150% speed turbo loader - all the raster bars are standard colours - so it shouldn't be too hard... right?

I can confirm that most of the WAV of Enigma #1 works as it should, including everything with a turbo-loader. There's a few unlisted programs at the end which are a bit dodgy and may or may not be an intended part of the magazine - there's a block of scrap data between the last listed program and the extra bits, similar to what Simon Ulyett has a habit of doing with his Cronosoft tapes when he's re-used an old tape with a previous title on it. Two of the extra programs were Hamish Rust's work, so it may be intentional, or it might have been one of his old test tapes that slid through the net...

[Rorthron]

BTW, welcome to the forum, @LouEnPointe

[^m00h^]

Hi @LouEnPointe, how many issues of ETM do you have in wav files ?

[LouEnPointe]

Issues One through Nine and they're from the authors ESD, so no magazine covermount issues.

I've just finished encoding 1 through 4 into wav files - the azimuth tweaking is annoying and the margin for error in the signal of the tapes is small. I've scanned all the paper info I have as well.

I'm about to try number 5.

And thank you for the welcome

PS I need to go back to issue 1 as the Denizen's demo doesn't like working under Fuse's fast loader as part of a larger wav. Strip it out, fine. Put it in, and it's not happy. I'll go back to that last.

[^m00h^]

Can you share wav files and i will ask Dr.Titus to help with it using his TapeRecover tool ?

https://vtrd.in/pcutilz/TAPRC201.zip

[LouEnPointe]

It's all still a work in progress. I'll post the link, but I'm not posting wavs until I know they load in Fuse.
At present 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9 are there.

Please recognise that I would rather not have three or four people saying to do things different ways as I am prone to panic attacks caused by work hence dealing with one person. So I'm doing this in good faith.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

There is a README.txt in each Enigma tape directory that indicates issues if any.

Thanks,
Louise

[^m00h^]

Thank you so much Louise! We will help you convert it to tap format.

[TMD2003]

Thank you so much Louise! We will help you convert it to tap format.

TZX would be a hell of a lot better with those turbo loaders involved...

[LouEnPointe]

I can confirm that most of the WAV of Enigma #1 works as it should, including everything with a turbo-loader. There's a few unlisted programs at the end which are a bit dodgy and may or may not be an intended part of the magazine - there's a block of scrap data between the last listed program and the extra bits, similar to what Simon Ulyett has a habit of doing with his Cronosoft tapes when he's re-used an old tape with a previous title on it. Two of the extra programs were Hamish Rust's work, so it may be intentional, or it might have been one of his old test tapes that slid through the net...

I can confirm that those unlisted programs should be at the end of Enigma 2.
ie. The Denizen demo
Sound Sampler (Sample something and play it back slower or faster)
Word Count for Tasword 2
Unerase program for +D owners.

Info gleaned from a page in the documents I scanned. So despite Denizen demo on Enigma 2 missing a block, we could take the missing block from the unexpected one at the end of Enigma 1.

[TMD2003]

This is all sounding very good. Knowing officially where Enigma #1 starts and ends means it can be cleaned up enough to give a TZX converter the maximum chance of success.

I should have more of a chance to get to grips with some of this on Thursday.

[^m00h^]

The previous 6 issue does not have one block, it was erased and overwritten by the game:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... ne_issue_6

but now we should have full complete ussue.

[^m00h^]

This is all sounding very good. Knowing officially where Enigma #1 starts and ends means it can be cleaned up enough to give a TZX converter the maximum chance of success.
I should have more of a chance to get to grips with some of this on Thursday.

Sounds like fantastic! Looking for missing issues since 1996.

[TMD2003]

The chances are, @LouEnPointe was the first person to have read any of the reviews from Enigma #1 in over 30 years, and I was the second. Who wants to be the third? The day is just around the corner.

[LouEnPointe]

Enigma 8 is now there.

Block 7 - starting 17:20 in the wav has a dropout midway through. Roundabout 18:10-18:20 for a fraction of a second. Unloadable block.
Maybe someone can work some magic

[LouEnPointe]

And Enigma 7 is there are well.

[LouEnPointe]

Enigma 6 done and there.

Only Issue 5 left to do. That's for tomorrow.

[Gilby]

I've also got some Enigma tape magazines if extra samples will help out?

I've got issues 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 ans 9 plus a disassembler cassette.

Steve

[LouEnPointe]

And that's 5 there as well

[^m00h^]

I've also got some Enigma tape magazines if extra samples will help out?

I've got issues 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 ans 9 plus a disassembler cassette.

Steve

Hi Steve,
can you dump them all for any case and also to clear about same files in 1 and 2 issues, also 9 issue seems to have bad blocks, and very interesting about dissassembler cassette.